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Not Blowin’ in the Wind

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Alan McAlpine Douglas on November 8, 2011

How many facts must a minister ignore,before his costly dreams are all canned?How many zillions must tax-payer pay,before he gives up his stupid plans?How many birds chewed, that once could fly,before they’re forever banned?

The answer C Huhne, ain’t blowing in the wind,the answer’s not blowing in the wind.

How many years can his opinions exist,before they are laughed out to sea?How many years can penalty points exist,before a driving licence becomes free?And how many times can a man thumb his nose,all-knowing, pretending he’s innocent, you see?

The answer C Huhne, ain’t blowing in the wind,the answer’s not blowing in the wind.

How many times must a man look up,before he sees the oh-so-obvious?And how many ears must that man have,before he hears the nation is bust?How many dead OAPs will it take till we know,about nothing – that’s for all his fuss?

The answer C Huhne, ain’t blowing in the wind,the answer’s not blowing in the wind.

The answer C Huhne, ain’t blowing in the wind,the answer’s NOT turning, in no wind.

If Huhne has to pay a few hundred pounds a year extra for his energy needs it is not going to impact much on his lifestyle. A lifestyle courtesy of the British taxpayer. So why do we allow politicians to make decisions that effect all of us? Is it not time that political decision making be taken out of the hands of politicians and put where it belongs in the hands of the people? In this era of high speed communications we have the technology to do just that. We are living in a time where democracy is in contraction as can be seen by the proliferation of unelected bodies that are governing our lives such as Quangos and the EU. Is it not time to say no more taxation without true representation.

One of the biggest problems with energy policy is the insidious way that climate science has been politicised. Theories of climate science with not much to support them have become regarded as gospel, for some reason.

There are two problems with electricity supply; short term and long term. The short term problem is that most of our big generators are eithe reaching the end of their safe or economic lives (nuclear) or have to be shut down shortly because of EU legislation (coal). That leaves us with gas and some bits and bats. The answer is to build some modern coal-fired stations, which because technology has moved on since our existing ones were built 40 to 50 years ago, would generate the same electricity whilst burning less coal (about 15 -20% less). Unfortunately, the greenies can’t understand the advantages, so we won’t do it. (We’ll end up burning gas instead.)

We don’t have any time at all to solve this problem. The old coal stations have to go in 2015, taking out about 30% of our generating capacity. We have to replace that now, and wind won’t even come close to doing that.

The long-term problem can be left for later. New-build nuclear will be part of the solution, along with gas (provided we can still afford to buy it), and whatever other major sources we might develop to commercial scale (fusion?).

Wind is fine as a small-scale add-on, but being variable and unpedictable, it can never be a base-load option. The thinking in the industry at the moment suggests that we could live with wind as about 5% of our maximum generating capacity at most – any more than that, and the grid would become uncontrollable. (Either that, or control over who used how much and when would have to be introduced – electricity rationing in all but name.)

It is not only the wind turbines that are the problem. All off-shore (and some on-shore) wind turbines need a HV (high voltage) Grid to connect them to the centres of population. Long HV Pylon Grids all over the country.

What’s more, it is said that the currently planned offshore wind-power will require 45 million tons of concrete for the base structures alone. Wonder what the total ‘carbon cost’ of extracting, manufacturing and transporting 45 million tons of concrete is ? Wind-power is just that, a load of air, but promoted by vested interests, as usual.

One of the disadvantages of long transmission lines is ‘line losses’ – not all the energy you shove in at one end will reach the other. (The losses are mostly dissipated as heat.) The longer the line, the worse the losses. Most of our big generators are relatively near to concentrations of consumers (even the nuclear stations) which helps to reduce the problem a bit.

Wind turbines rarely operate at full capacity, as we know. So a wind farm remote from centres of population operating at significantly less than full output (i.e. most of the time) may have a much higher proportion of the energy it does generate dissipated in line losses than larger stations closer to users.

I suspect that it would be big industrial users who would suffer first. There is already some control over when, say, a big steel-melting electric arc furnace can be brought online. The operator has to contact the grid controllers for permission, which they may not grant immediately if they have to get another power station fired up to meet the load. That sort of thing would have to become more prevalent, with consequent negative impact on our industrial competitiveness.

I was at a London event last October (Innovate’10) where various representatives of energy suppliers and the National Grid were more than happy to explain that smart metering would allow them to shut down domestic appliances when they decided that you didn’t need them to be powered – fridge freezers where the primary example being used and they were anticipating integrated chips in all domestic devices to allow such control.

IIRC, we also had the chief of teh National Grid either late last year or early this year telling us that we had become too accustomed to electricity simply being there when we turned the switch and that this was likely to change.

I suspect, Engineer, that your interpretation may be optimistic, assuming that you can construe the destruction of what little industry we have left as being optimistic.